Dear Solihull PSP

I would like to put forward my comments and concerns regarding the wide ranging proposals outlined in your ''2020 Vision for Solihull’’ document.

Whilst i fully understand and accept the need for the council to have to meet a variety of challenges and demands around housing, support for businesses and of course the environmental impacts. The sheer size and scope of the proposals is very concerning and if implemented I suggest will completely destroy the ‘’Town in the Country’’ image that Solihull is so well known for and so greatly treasured by its residents (and I would expect, by Solihull council).

The proposals if they go ahead will surely just turn the borough into a huge urban sprawl that will be indistinguishable from the neighbouring city of Birmingham?

The two particularly areas of concern for me and I suspect most of the Damson Parkway and Catherine De Barnes residents, are as follows:

1, The number and size of the proposed housing developments, particularly those proposed for sites in Catherine De Barnes and Lug-Trout Lane. Some 795 new homes in what have always been quiet rural or semi-rural locations and will completely dominate those locations.
POLICY HA2 and POLICY S01

2, The proposed relocation of the Bickenhill Waste disposal site to the corner of Damson Parkway and the A45 Coventry Rd. POLICY UK2

This proposal is problematic for the following reasons:

- the environmental impact, noise and disruption in the construction of such a site. No doubt this will be a signifiant development with many months of major construction works.
- the destruction of yet more valuable green belt land, which is in short supply and which the council claims to hold so sacred!
- the noise and pollution that this site will bring when it becomes operational, particularly from heavy vehicles entering and leaving the site
- the traffic chaos that will be caused by traffic using the site having to compete for limited road space with JLR factory traffic and that from the soon to be opened JLR logistics centre. Traffic chaos already exists at JLR shift changeover times and on match days for the Solihull Moors Football Club.

Bringing the waste site to Damson Parkway will be a complete disaster for the local residents who have already had to endure 18 months of pollution and disruption from the construction of the JLR Logistics centre. Which is yet to open and will no doubt cause severe traffic problems of its own.

It will also completely destroy the semi-rural nature of the area by effectively turning what was a residential housing estate near the Land Rover Factory, into a major industrial area.

It seems that Residents of the Damson Parkway estate will be under fire from 2 major developments to the North and West.

There must be other more viable options than to bring a major industrial facility to an already congested Residential area?

I strongly urge the planning and delivery directorate decision makers to reconsider their proposals, particularly with regard to the relocation of the Bickenhill Waste site and Moat Lane Depot to Damson Parkway.
Such sites should surely be located away from residential areas and be contained within or adjacent to an already established industrial estate?

I therefore wish to register my objections to Policies HA2, S01 and UK2, in the strongest possible terms.

Regards


Gerald Hudson